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This month's update brings you an interesting mix of events and stories. We begin with urgent news from the Middle East, continue with a provocative analysis from the U.S. deep South, and close with a trip back to medical schools of the 1940s. We also are proud to celebrate a well-deserved award recently announced for one of our DARA board members.
Palestinian Red Crescent activities have observers seeing BDS red
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society is ostensibly a neutral organization. That at least was the commitment implicit in its joining the International Federation of the Red Cross. The federation requires that “in order to continue to enjoy the confidence of all, the Movement may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.”
So how could the PRCS host a conference this month for the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement?
This year's conference, which took place on March 16, is the sixth installment of the event and organized under a theme: "Another boycott and struggle against normalization in order to resist the colonialist and racist Israeli regime and to isolate it."
The DARA leadership is looking into the matter and will keep you posted on our progress.
How racism (and other factors) impact HIV treatment
We sometimes struggle to isolate racism as a factor in health outcomes. Often what seems like racism may more reliably be explained by poverty or other social causes. That's the question raised by this interesting deep dive from National Public Radio in the U.S.
These two statistics set the stage: First, more than half the new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. in 2017 were in Southern states, where gay and bisexual black men make up a disproportionate share of people with the disease.
One more metric: About half of all black men who have sex with men (and 25 percent of Latino gay and bisexual men) in the U.S. will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control a few years ago.
The NPR story, which provides excellent first-person accounts, attributes the problem partly to lack of access to medication. Many in the black community cannot afford the high cost of a pill that can prevent infection. Called pre-exposure prophylaxis, it can cost up to $1600 for those with no insurance but could lower infection rates in high-risk populations.
The story is worth a read. At the same time, many of the points it raises deal directly with poverty and only indirectly with racism. Ultimately, it raises a larger question: How should health policy researchers evaluate the racism-poverty nexus?
When anti-Semitism ruled at medical schools
By now most people know about anti-Semitic enrollment restrictions during the 1940s. At a time that the world focused on the Holocaust and its horror, lower-level policies against Jews ruled on campuses in North America. This month a Queen's University publication took a look at this era - and its importance for the medical community.
McGill University's Faculty of Medicine ensured that Jews did not exceed 10% of admissions. At the University of Toronto’s medical school, Jewish students were held to higher admission standards as late as the 1960s.
As for Queen's University itself, the article provides little data specifically on its medical school but does highlight the limited anti-Semitic measures taken by administrators for the school overall.
But administrators did exhibit anti-Semitism in an unexpected area: fundraising. When Harry and Ethel Abramsky offered to fund a Physiology building, the school accepted the money. There was one catch: it hid the Abramsky plaque behind the doors. School leaders only moved it outside in 1974.
Dr. Frank Sommers receives OMA honour
We are very proud to congratulate DARA board member Dr. Frank Sommers on receiving the Ontario Medical Association's Presidential Award.
The award recognizes exceptional and long-standing humanitarian service to the greater community that brings honour to the medical profession.
A longtime board member of DARA, Frank is a distinguished fellow of the Canadian and American Psychiatric Associations. He founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Canadian affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
Frank also founded the Section of Disaster Psychiatry at the CPA, and Disaster Psychiatry Canada in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
Congrats, Franks!
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